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KATE DIDN’T KNOW WHY she’d never thought to enlist someone from Vauxhall before. Having Henry on her side made everything so much easier. She didn’t have to climb under hedges or scale fences. She simply strolled in through the main entrance. And she didn’t have to wait until it was dark on the nights the pleasure gardens were closed. She could enter during the day, just like a normal Londoner who’d come to enjoy the flowers.
Except she wasn’t a normal Londoner. She was the Duke of Vauxhall, and she had much to supervise if her plan for the night of the prizefight was to be a success. And if all went as planned the night would be a spectacular victory. The Duke of Devonshire had agreed to attend and to present the winner of the fight not only a fat purse but also a ring of gold, encrusted with diamonds. Kate wanted that ring. Henry would have never agreed to that portion of her scheme, but as long as he thought all she planned was to capitalize on London’s betting nature, she needn’t worry. That Henry was participating at all surprised her—not that he’d agreed to participate; she’d given him little choice in the matter. The level of his participation surprised her. He was a viscount, but that didn’t stop him from dirtying his hands. He put his back to the necessary manual labor along with Red, Scrugs, Davey, and all the rest. Henry dug pits, positioned ropes and nets, and obscured walking paths—and all without a word of protest.
If he hadn’t already had a position in the House of Lords, she would have hired him to work for her. The first day in Vauxhall, Henry had to leave early to attend a session of the Lords. Kate had wondered how he’d managed. He’d looked exhausted when he left, and she knew the Lords could often sit for hours.
But the next day, he had arrived even before she, looking as dashing as usual with his hair neatly combed and his jaw freshly shaven.
He labored as hard as he had the day before, but she knew him well enough to see the signs of fatigue others would miss. She noted the way he rolled his neck and how often he pressed a hand to his eyes. Kate made sure to offer him extra rations of ale, scowling when she caught Red looking at her with an amused grin on his face.
“Wipe that smirk off your face,” she ordered Red.
“Yes, Duke,” he said and went back to shoveling excess dirt into a flowerbed where it wouldn’t be seen.
After a moment, Kate put her hands on her hips. “Why were you smiling?”
Red shrugged. “I’ve known you a long time, Duke.”
“And you’re smiling because of all the times I’ve saved your arse?”
“Ha!” He glanced at her over his shoulder. “You mean all the times I saved your arse.”
“If that’s how you remember it, you’ve been hit on the head once too often.” But if she was being honest, he had saved her as often as she had saved him.
“I haven’t been hit so much that I don’t recognize the look on your face.”
“The look that says I could smash your nose with that spade at any moment?”
But Red wasn’t worried. “No, this look has more to do with a lusty roll in the sheets.” He inclined his head toward Henry, who was listening intently to something Scrugs was saying.
“I don’t have time for rolls in the sheets,” she said.
“That’s too bad. This is the first time I’ve ever seen you interested in a man for more than what you can pick from his pocket.”
“I’ve had my share of rolls in the sheets.”
Red lowered the shovel and looked at her. “You did what you had to do. Maybe it’s time you tried doing what you want to do.”
She looked at him for a long time. Red didn’t often speak, and he’d never offered her advice. But he did know her better and had known her longer than anyone else, save Henry. She lowered her voice. “I’m no innocent. He wouldn’t want me.”
“Oh, he wants you. He has the same look you do when you’re not watching. And don’t tell me you believe all that rubbish about men wanting a virgin. Any man worth his salt wants a wench who’s clever and pretty and makes him laugh.”
Kate stared at him. Was that really true? Was that the reason Henry had kissed her? Because he thought she was clever and pretty and she made him laugh? Well, she hadn’t made him laugh yet, but she could. She’d thought their kiss had simply been a way to relive a moment of the past, but what if it had been more?
“So?” Red said. “What do you say?”
She put her hands on her hips again. “Did you actually call me a wench? Do you remember what happened to the last person who called me a wench?”
Red shook his head and went back to his work, closing his mouth for good this time.
But at the end of the day, when Henry didn’t leave for a session of Parliament, Kate walked beside him as they exited the pleasure gardens.
“Tomorrow is the fight,” Henry said, making idle conversation. “No matter what happens, you can’t say I haven’t done all I could to ensure success.”
“We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
He stopped and rounded on her. “I bloody well knew you would say that. You’ll never trust me, will you?”
“I don’t know. Do you claim to trust me?”
“Of course I don’t trust you,” he argued. “Every time I turn around, you threaten me. I never know what you’ll do from one moment to the next.”
Kate rather liked that description of herself. “The Lords are not sitting in Parliament tonight?” she asked.
Henry scowled at her in confusion. “No. Why should you care?”
“I don’t.”
He stomped away from her, and she could have kicked herself, because that was not at all what she’d meant to say. With a half-dozen quick strides, she caught up to him. “I asked because I thought you might join us at The Griffin and the Unicorn. I’m buying everyone a drink.” She didn’t know where that came from. She hadn’t intended to do any such thing. But it was too late now. Scrugs had been walking by, and he let out a little whoop of joy. The next thing she knew, his blond head was bouncing ahead of them as he spread the news to the other men.
Since she couldn’t rescind the offer now, she hoped she hadn’t made it in vain. “Why don’t you join us?” she suggested. “You did as much work as anyone.”
Henry narrowed his eyes and looked at her for a long time. She didn’t have to wonder at his thoughts. No doubt he was thinking about how to turn her down without making her so angry she slit his throat. After all, why would a viscount want to sit and drink with a gang of criminals?
“Never mind,” she said, cutting him off before he could reject her. “It was a foolish idea. I’m certain you’d rather go home to your town house in Mayfair.” She marched away, grinding her teeth against the sting of tears.
“Why would I wish to return home to an empty house?” he asked from behind her. “Don’t misunderstand, I have a full complement of servants, but conversations where the other party answers nothing but yes, my lord and no, my lord do grow tiresome.”
Kate found her mouth curving into a grin. “No one will be my lording you at The Griffin and the Unicorn.” Her voice was carefully neutral.
“And you’ll drink with us?”
Now she did turn so he could see her smile. “I’ll give the toast.”
***
UNTIL THE MOMENT HENRY sat at the bar in The Griffin and the Unicorn, he had almost convinced himself he was no longer smitten with Kate. She’d threatened him, ordered him about, and compelled him to complete her backbreaking work. When she’d asked him to have a drink with her, his one thought had been that he’d rather kill her than drink with her.
But he hadn’t lied about the emptiness of his Mayfair residence. It had belonged to the Viscounts Bexley for as long as he could remember. He hadn’t ever expected to live there, and after the initial awe and wonder he’d felt upon moving in and realizing the grand house was all his now, he’d wanted little more than to go back to his room above his barrister’s office.
That little section of Islington was home to him. The people there were familiar. He saw the same men and women he’d seen every day since he’d been old enough to toddle out of doors. His friends were there. One or two had come to visit him in Mayfair, but everything had felt stilted and awkward and his friends hadn’t returned. He was a viscount. He was supposed to make friends with earls and marquesses. But they seemed to want little to do with him. He’d been in trade—it was always said with a disapproving intonation—before being elevated to the rank of viscount. They might sit beside him in the Lords, but they didn’t invite him to their clubs or their soirees. The one time he had thought he had made some progress and made friends, he’d been tricked into doing the other peers’ dirty work.
And now he was stuck playing the disapproving banker to the Prince Regent.
Henry didn’t belong at The Griffin and the Unicorn, but neither did he belong in Mayfair. He didn’t know where he belonged, or where he would end up, but he knew when he was with Kate, he had the sense that he was where he should be.
In some ways, she didn’t belong either. Yes, she was a celebrated lord of the underworld, but the power she held was a ruse. She dressed like a man and played the role of the Duke of Vauxhall, but she wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretense forever. And when her rivals discovered she was a woman, they would come for her and her gang, and no crime lord—not even the Duke of Vauxhall—would be able to withstand that sort of attack.
The blond thug—his name was apparently Scrugs, though Henry was uncertain whether that was his given name or his surname—stood behind the bar and poured a generous measure of gin into a glass before slamming it down in front of Henry. Henry looked at the glass. He didn’t usually drink gin, but he could hardly refuse without offending someone. Red and Scrugs tipped their glasses and shot theirs back, swallowing it with one gulp. Henry tried to do the same and ended up coughing for a good five minutes.
When he could breathe again, Kate was beside him. “A little strong for you, my lord?”
“No my lording,” he managed to rasp out of his burning throat.
“My mistake,” she said. “I have some brandy in my parlor. Would you prefer that?”
Red and Scrugs smirked at him.
“No,” Henry said, clearing his throat. “Another gin, please.” He pushed his glass toward Scrugs, who filled it again. Then he filled his own and tossed it back. Thirty minutes and three drinks later, the room spun and Henry was no longer tossing gin back. The gang’s attention had shifted to a high-stakes dice game, and Henry was left to stare into his gin and wish he’d drunk less and stared more.
Kate pulled out the chair beside him and sat. “Sometimes I think I will never understand men,” she said, staring directly in front of her. “Why do you feel the need to prove your masculinity by making yourself ill?”
“I’m not ill.”
Her eyes cut to him. “Liar. You’re practically green.”
“I need something to soak up the alcohol.”
Kate lifted a hand, and the lad behind the bar brought over a plate with bread and cheese. Henry forced himself to take a small bite of the bread.
“I worked for men,” she said.
Henry stopped chewing and stared at her. She continued to look forward, not meeting his gaze. “When my mother and father were gone, I had no way to survive and so I learned to pick pockets. Eventually, I moved on to other rackets, but the one commonality was that the arch rogues were always men. So I watched them. I learned what it meant to be a man. I studied them until I knew their strengths and their weaknesses. Now I think I may be a better man than most men.”
“I’m certain that would have made sense two drinks ago.”
She smiled faintly. “I still have to prove myself, but I don’t overimbibe because I don’t have the need to protect my masculine pride.”
“What about your feminine pride?” Henry asked before he could think better of it. It was better for both of them if he did not think of her as a woman. If he did not remember the way she’d looked in her bedchamber, half dressed and lovely.
“I still have my feminine pride,” she said quietly. “I didn’t think I did. Not until I saw you again.”
Henry turned sharply, but before he could ask what she meant, she hopped off her seat. “Come have a brandy with me.”
“It hurts my masculine pride to admit this, but if I drink anything else, I’ll fall over.”
“Then watch me drink, but a true gentleman doesn’t refuse a lady his company.”
He tried to hop off his stool with as much grace as she had shown, but he had to grab the bar to keep from rolling onto the floor. “I’m not much of a gentleman,” he said when he’d righted himself again.
“I’m not much of a lady.”
To his surprise, she took his hand and led him back to the room where he’d been brought that first night—the library/torture chamber. When they were alone inside, the door closed behind them, he looked at the desk where she’d used the iron bar so ruthlessly.
“Whatever happened to the man you called Hedgehog?”
She blew out a breath. He’d thought she would pour herself a drink. Instead, she wriggled onto the top of her desk so her trouser-clad legs hung down. “I wish you hadn’t seen that.”
“That makes two of us.” He sat heavily on the couch. The room didn’t spin as much when he sat. “But I think I understand why you did it.”
“I doubt that.”
“Why? Because I’m not a crime lord? We’re not so different, you and I.”
“Now I know you are drunk.”
“Hear me out.” He tried to stand—always better to make a speech standing—but thought better of it when the upward motion made his vision blur. Kate was beside him in a moment, her hand on his elbow. He shook it off and continued from where he was. “If one of my servants or my steward steals from me, I let him go without a reference. If I tolerate the theft, what’s to stop others from stealing from me too? If one of your men steals from you, you have to punish him, or others will follow suit.”
She raised a brow. “Smashing a man’s hand is slightly different from refusing to write a letter of reference.”
He shook his head and regretted the movement immediately. “Not really. You ended Hedgehog’s career as a pickpocket the same way the career of a servant is ended if he or she has no reference. But here’s the real question, Kate.”
Her large brown eyes met his.
“Why did you stop at smashing his hand? Why didn’t you kill him?”
“You want me to commit murder?”
“I want you to survive. You won’t survive in your world for long if you’re soft.”
She gave a short bark of laughter. “You don’t know anything about my world.”
“I know that once your secret is out, you won’t stand a chance. I can’t believe you’ve hidden who you really are this long. What’s to stop a man like Hedgehog from going to another gang and telling the—what do you call them? Arch rogues—”
She inclined her head
“—that you’re a woman?”
“Nothing but fear.”
“One of these days, the desire for revenge will be stronger than the fear.”
She nodded slightly, as though she knew all of this. “Everyone dies. Some of us die younger than others.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“Oh, will you sweep in and rescue me?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “Do you think I’m a princess in need of rescue from the fire-breathing dragon? I can save myself.” She stood and paced angrily away.
“Perhaps we can save each other.”
She stilled. He couldn’t see her face with her back turned to him, but he knew he’d caught her attention. “You don’t want this life, Kate. You’re not a monster. You don’t want to hurt people. If you did, you would have killed that man.”
“I may yet have to kill him.” She turned, and her eyes were liquid with unshed tears. “I didn’t choose this life, but it’s all I have. Don’t pretend we can be any more to each other than we are in this room.”
“And if I asked you to marry me?” He did not know if he would have said that if he hadn’t been drinking, but the drink had made saying what he wanted so much easier.
“Then I’d tell you no and expect you to thank me. I no more belong in your world than you do in mine. What do you think would happen if you married me, even if no one knew I was the Duke of Vauxhall? The truth would still come out. I was a thief, a criminal, a whore.”
“You’d be my wife.” His voice rose now because he wanted to block out her words. None of them described the Kate he’d known or the Kate he saw standing before him now.
“I’d be an outcast, and so would you. You don’t want that. If you cared nothing for your title and your duty, you wouldn’t be chasing after Prinny’s approval.”
“I could give it up.” But could he? What about his title? He hadn’t wanted it, but it had existed for hundreds of years and would exist for hundreds more. Who was he to taint it? What about his family? What would they say? Could he stand strong against their censure? Against the censure of all of London? His servants would give notice, the merchants he frequented would not sell to him. In short, he would be anathema.
And he would pass his low status on to Kate and their children.
“I wouldn’t ask you to give it up,” Kate said, as though she could read his thoughts. “Tomorrow is the fight, and then you’ll be rid of me for good.” She moved closer to him. “For good, Henry. It’s better this way.”
“Funny that I can’t see that at the moment.”
“You will.”
“No. All I see is you, Kate.” He took her hands. “You’re all I want to see, all I think about night and day. Even if it means digging holes in Vauxhall Gardens, I cannot wait to be with you.”
“I worry about you, Henry.” Her voice was soft. “If digging holes is all you have to look forward to.”
He pulled her gently onto the couch beside him. “I hope it’s not all I have to look forward to.” He leaned forward, but stopped just short of kissing her. If she wanted him, she’d have to move to kiss him. If she didn’t want him—well, he’d rather she not smash his head in.
She took her time deciding. At least, it seemed so to him. He didn’t dare move or breathe. He barely dared to blink. And then finally she closed the distance between them, her warm lips brushing over his. She was iron covered in silk, the strength of her always there and shielding her inner softness. He knew she could be soft, and he felt it now in her kiss, in the silkiness of her lips as they trailed over his.
He pulled her into his arms, shifting back so she sat on his lap and he could tangle his fingers in her short hair. His thumbs brushed along her cheeks as he deepened the kiss. And then he did not know if it was the drink or her lips, but he was falling down and down and down into a world of sensation where nothing but her body and her lips and the sound of her breathing existed.
“Kate—” he began.
“Shh. Don’t talk. Just kiss me.”
He complied, saying what he wanted with his hands and his mouth. I want you. I love you. I’ve always loved you.
He couldn’t get enough of her, and when he bent to kiss her neck, she shrugged out of her man’s coat. His hands slid up her back, now clothed only in the thin linen shirt. It felt strange to loosen a neckcloth not his own, but he did so easily, then kissed the skin he’d exposed. She was warm, and she smelled clean and pretty—but not feminine. No roses or lilies. She smelled of soap and linen and a hint of mint.
He thought she would stop him when he freed the buttons on her shirt. It would have taken nothing more than a nudge with one of her hands, but she made no move to resist. Instead, she unfastened her cuffs and lifted her hands willingly when he pulled the garment over her head. She straddled him now, her torso bare but for the bindings that pressed her breasts flat. He could see where the linen had been knotted, and he kissed the knot, which elicited a quick inhalation of breath from her.
Using his teeth, he opened the knot, then began the arduous process of unwrapping her. He’d unwound yards of fabric before he caught a glimpse of her skin through the thin linen. And then, as the fabric loosened, her small, round breasts began to take shape, and he could see the outlines of her nipples, pressing against the material. Finally, the last strip of cloth fell away, and she was bare from the waist up. Her skin bore the marks of the tight material, and yet he’d never seen anything more beautiful.
He ran a hand lightly over the angry red marks. “Does it hurt?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I’m used to it. They fade.”
He could already see her skin pushing against the indentations, plumping back out and filling in where it had been suppressed. He lifted one breast with his hand and ran his thumb over the distended nipple. She drew in a quick breath and closed her eyes. He repeated the gesture with the other breast, then touched his tongue to her skin. In response, her body slid closer to his, her bottom pressing harder against his erection. He took her into his mouth, suckling gently and teasing the nipple until it swelled and hardened against his tongue.
Her hands fisted in his hair, and her breathing grew faster. “I didn’t know that could feel so good,” she said on a moan as his mouth moved to her other breast.
She felt good in his arms. She felt as though she belonged there, her skin against his. He couldn’t claim that he had much experience with women, but he had always been observant. Kate’s responses made it clear what gave her the most pleasure.
“There are other ways to make you feel good,” he said against her soft flesh. He allowed his hand to drift to her belly and slide downward. If she’d been wearing a skirt, he might have slid his hands beneath and showed her how he wanted to touch her. But she was wearing trousers, fitted trousers. Seeing her in men’s clothing was strange and arousing. His hand dipped to the waistband, and he opened the fall. But of course he would have to remove the trousers to touch her where he wanted. He looked up at her face, seeking permission or compliance.
Slowly, she rose up onto her knees.